Islamic State Benefits From Cyber Attack on TV5 Monde

There are legitimate unknown factors about the origin of the cyber attack that infiltrated the Paris offices of TV5 Monde.  Eleven channels of the French media company were taken off the air and both Twitter and Facebook accounts were taken over with IS propaganda.  The propaganda included personal information of family members of French forces involved in countering IS and issued stern warnings against French involvement in countering the IS jihad.  This is consistent with recent IS cyber operations.

Though all of these factors support the claims of IS, France 24 has pointed out translation issues that do not sync up with proper Islamic practice or even the self descriptive practice of IS itself.  If the targeting of TV5 Monde were a cover for another actor with other motives, such a cover would still favor the purposes of IS.

There is a strategic factor that can be learned from this event without the certainty of forensic cyber origins.  In the practice of espionage and subversion and enemy can exploit a range of sympathizers to act against a Western symbol of democracy like France, the U.K., or the U.S.  If for example, another group sees Western foreign policy as a greater evil than Islamist sadism, they may interpret IS as a vanguard de jour or a natural end-state to capitalism.  Hackers on that end of the ideological spectrum could easily be found among those sympathizers of the hacking group Anonymous, 911 Truthers, RevCom, and 99%ers.

In any case, IS can utilize the sympathies of other actors.  More precisely, Sunni Islamist movements can tap into a broader hatred of Western civilization and capitalism that is often fed into by leftist tendencies of Western leaders to apologies for their foreign policy.